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AI for Conservation / Feed

Artificial intelligence is increasingly being used in the field to analyse information collected by wildlife conservationists, from camera trap and satellite images to audio recordings. AI can learn how to identify which photos out of thousands contain rare species; or pinpoint an animal call out of hours of field recordings - hugely reducing the manual labour required to collect vital conservation data.

article

Application of computer vision for off-highway vehicle route detection: A case study in Mojave desert tortoise habitat

Alexander J Robillard

8 April 2025 2:30pm

Driving off-highway vehicles (OHVs), which contributes to habitat degradation and fragmentation, is a common recreational activity in the United States and other parts of the world, particularly in desert environments...

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Vance Russell

24 April 2025 9:24am

Fantastic and thank you! It will be very interesting to see how these tools can be applied to other species and anthropomorphic features!
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discussion

Has anyone combined flying drone surveys with AI for counting wild herds?

Johnathan

14 April 2024 3:40pm

My vision is a drone, the kind that fly a survey pattern. Modern ones have a 61 megapixel camera and LIDAR which is a few millimeter resolution, they are for mapping before a road...

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Jared Marley

31 May 2024 5:47pm

Hi Johnathan, 



There is a Canadian company more or less doing that. They have their own endurance drone and optical/thermal cameras. Very much keyed into surveys and they may have success given the number of helicopter accidents we have had in Western Canada. Not sure if the AI part is there yet. 



I know they've done surveys with at least one department here but not much beyond that. I talked to one of the developers their just as a point of interest. The current leadership today looks different than I remember though. 



 

Johnathan

6 June 2024 2:48pm

The camera can be aimed at the greenhouse background, which is like a huge green screen. Inside the greenhouse there's only a few flying insects, and they would all have to fly between the optics and the wall or roof eventually. Or if the bot is flying, have it look upwards. 

It's pretty much a programing question. Unfortunately I am not the type of person who is good at both building and troubleshooting hardware, and writing code. I took some programming back in college but I am not sure if I want to get myself up to speed. It's starting to sound like I need a few years of college before I can even get started. Which I already did, too bad none of it counts for anything anymore. Or I guess I can compete in the marketplace with people with real money behind them, which is the only thing that means anything. If you are brilliant and not funded, you might as well be a scarecrow.

Ethan Salinsky

3 April 2025 12:53am

Hi all, I'm the founder of a company in Texas that provides thermal drone surveying for private game ranches. Right now, we're doing everything completely manually in terms of counting during both the initial flight as well as the review. Automating our process with an AI program would be great, but there are multiple limitations I'd imagine:

1.) Thermal imaging has pretty poor resolution even when you're only 100 feet or so above the ground. We'll often need to bring the drone down even closer to identify a buck vs doe. I'd imagine an AI model would be even more limited by this poor resolution

2.) Using a visible zoom camera in tandem with the thermal can help with this issue, but then you are very limited. Thermal works great at night, but requires cool, cloudy days if you're wanting to fly in the daylight to use the optical camera. In Texas, these are few and far between.

3.) Even if you were to figure out everything else, there are often animals that rewuire a pilot to move the drone off its path in order to identify (for example if they're bedded down behind a tree we will often need to swing around to the other side. 

If anyone is interested, we do record all of our surveys, so I have 1000+ hours of thermal footage of animals from whitetail deer to nilgai to zebra. I'd be happy to share this with someone who's interested in potentially building a model if they think they can solve the limitations.

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article

Nature Tech for Biodiversity Sector Map launched!

Carly Batist and 1 more

1 April 2025 1:41pm

Conservation International is proud to announce the launch of the Nature Tech for Biodiversity Sector Map, developed in partnership with the Nature Tech Collective! 

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Frank van der Most

4 April 2025 1:57pm

Thanks for sharing @carlybatist  and @aliburchard !About the first point, lack of data integration and interpretation will be a bottleneck, if not death blow to the whole...
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funding

Multiple grants

Frank van der Most

28 March 2025 1:42pm

I have been a bit distracted the past months by my move from Costa Rica to Spain ( all went well, thank you, I just miss the rain forest and the Ticos ) and have to catch up on funding calls. Because I still have little...

2
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discussion

🌊 FathomVerse mobile game debuts new features to help gamers participate in ocean exploration

Lilli Wakinekona Carlsen

27 March 2025 1:20am

The ocean is vast, mysterious, and full of charismatic critters that look like they belong in a sci-fi movie. But unlike outer space, you don’t need a rocket to explore it—just a...

1 0
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discussion

WILDLABS AWARDS 2024 - BumbleBuzz: automatic recognition of bumblebee species and behaviour from their buzzing sounds 

Jeremy Froidevaux

12 April 2024 8:37am

The 'BumbleBuzz' team (@JeremyFroidevaux, @DarrylCox, @RichardComont, @TBFBumblebee, @KJPark, @yvesbas, @ilyassmoummad, @nicofarr) is very pleased to have been awarded the...

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Carly Batist

12 April 2024 8:41pm

Super great to see that there will be more work on insect ecoacoustics! So prevalent in practically every soundscape, but so often over-looked. Can't wait to follow this project as it develops!

Clay Bolt

26 March 2025 8:08pm

Really looking forward to following this project. I'm very curious how you'll be able to tease out different species, particularly among species that feature a variety of worker sizes. 

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discussion

Nature Tech Unconference - Anyone attending?

Elsa Carla De Grandi

8 March 2025 12:11pm

Hi all, anyone planning to attend the Nature Tech Unconference on 28th March at the London School of Economics Campus in London, UK? (the event is free to attend but...

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Matt Rogers

21 March 2025 12:07pm

The Futures Wild team will be there :)

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discussion

Generative AI for simulating landscapes before and after restoration activities

John Hartshorn

26 March 2025 1:59pm

Hi all.Has anyone come across any generative AI tools that could be trained and used to generate photorealistic landscapes (in a web application) from habitat maps and then re-...

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olivier rovellotti

26 March 2025 7:50pm

Yep we are working on it 

 

Read "#berlin #ia #paysage #naturetech #solutionsfondéessurlanature #greentech… | Olivier Rovellotti 🌍 | 11 comments" on

#berlin #ia #paysage #naturetech #solutionsfondéessurlanature #greentech… | Olivier Rovellotti 🌍 | 11 comments

🌿 Quand la Technologie Devient L'alliée du Paysagiste 🌍 🎨 Imaginer & Générer Grâce à l’IA générative (Stable Diffusion, Segment Anything), on peut imaginer #Berlin plus verte et tester différents scénarios d’aménagement. Une nouvelle manière d'explorer les possibles, en s’inspirant des principes des plus grands (McHarg, Clément, Burle Marx). 🌳💡 https://lnkd.in/g-uM7d-k 📚 Apprendre Les plateformes comme NBS EduWORLD rendent les solutions fondées sur la nature plus accessibles à tous. https://lnkd.in/gnBTkyN5 🔎 Cartographier & Anticiper Des outils comme ecoTeka permettent d’identifier les espaces à renaturer en croisant données SIG et IA. Cartographie, suivi des arbres, calcul des services écosystémiques… https://lnkd.in/daTBxbwn 🔗 Réfléchir: Dans "Harnessing generative AI to support nature-based solutions", Sandra Lavorel et Al nous donne des pistes d'explorations pour aller plus loin https://lnkd.in/gSH6Au9s 💬 Et vous ? 🌱🤖 #IA #Paysage #NatureTech #SolutionsFondéesSurLaNature #GreenTech #Biodiversité #NBSEduWorld #FosterTheFuture #TeachFromNature #NatureBasedSolutions #ClimateChange #STEM | 11 comments on LinkedIn

1/ segment 

2/remote unwanted ecosytem

3/get local potential habitat

4/generate

5/add to picture 

 

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event

Cloud-Native Geospatial Conference

Earthmover

26 March 2025 3:40pm

CNG Conference is where geospatial data users gather to create the future of our industry together. Learn how experts at NOAA, Planet, the World Bank, and others are using geospatial data and AI to solve some of the...

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funding

AI Weather Quest

Alex Rood

25 March 2025 5:07pm

The AI Weather Quest, organised by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), is an ambitious international competition designed to harness artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) in...

1
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discussion

United Nations Open Source Principles

Pen-Yuan Hsing

13 March 2025 4:13pm

FYI, I just came across the United Nations Open Source Principles, which was recently adopted by the UN Chief Executive Board’s Digital Technology Network (DTN): It has been...

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Vance Russell

25 March 2025 11:54am

All sound, would be nice if there were only 5, though!

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Link

InsectSet459: an open dataset of insect sounds for bioacoustic machine learning

Alex Rood

24 March 2025 5:46pm

InsectSet459 - the first large-scale open dataset of insect sounds, featuring 26,399 audio clips from 459 species of Orthoptera and Cicadidae.

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Link

Indigenous Groups Are Safeguarding Culture with Their Own ChatGPT | Atmos

Taylor Casalena

21 March 2025 12:59pm

Absolutely fascinating uses of AI for equitable conservation! Hope it inspires you!

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discussion

Subject: “Baa-bridge” – AI Sheep Stress Reduction, Seeking Genius Input!

Lloyd Fulham

20 February 2025 9:55pm

Subject: “Baa-bridge” – AI Sheep Stress Reduction, Seeking Genius Input! Hey Wildlabs community,I’m Lloyd Fulham, a French Canadian visionary in Quebec City...

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Julian Richardson

21 March 2025 12:18pm

I'm sure others here can comment better than I on models for classifying animal sounds, but from an ML pint of view, a key concern is getting enough data. 10 recordings does not sound like a lot (although how long are they?) and 1000 epochs does sound like a lot. It is very possible that your model is just learning to memorize the inputs, and that it will generalise poorly.

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discussion

ICCB 2025 – Let’s Connect!

Stephanie M.

9 March 2025 5:06am

Hi Everyone,I’m excited to be attending my first ICCB 2025 as a student presenter and early-career researcher! My work sits at the intersection of computational epidemiology and...

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Nguyen Thi-Tam Anh

12 March 2025 1:55pm

Hi everyone, I’m excited to become a member of Wild Lab! I’m currently working on my master’s thesis, focusing on dormouse conservation. My research explores the behavioral responses of dormice to temperature and habitat patterns using camera trap data.

Additionally, I’d like to incorporate agent-based modeling to simulate species behavior. However, I’m a bit unsure about how to effectively apply modeling for predictions. If anyone here has experience with modeling, I’d love to connect and discuss!

Looking forward to learning from you all.

Best regards,

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Link

Utilizing Artificial Intelligence to Reduce the Impact of Climate Change on Wildlife

Alex Rood

10 March 2025 5:42pm

This thesis concludes that artificial intelligence offers valuable opportunities for mitigating the impacts of climate change on wildlife with careful consideration of its limitations and ethical implications.

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Read "Utilizing Artificial Intelligence to Reduce the Impact of Climate Change on Wildlife" on Zenodo

Utilizing Artificial Intelligence to Reduce the Impact of Climate Change on Wildlife

AbstractCurrent anthropogenic climate change poses a significant threat to biodiversity, rapidly driving species towards extinction. Wildlife conservation relies on the speed and accuracy of processing environmental data, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) has emerged as a promising tool to assist wildlife conservation efforts. This thesis conducts a literature review to explore how artificial intelligence is being utilized to mitigate the impacts of climate change on wildlife. It examines the key applications of artificial intelligence, such as monitoring wildlife, predicting species distribution under climate effects, mitigation solutions, and poaching and trafficking detection. This literature review focuses on identifying the effective artificial intelligence models in current conservation practices, highlighting their capabilities, challenges, and limitations. The findings suggest that artificial intelligence can significantly enhance wildlife monitoring and conservation planning, as well as providing tools to predict environmental changes and plan mitigation strategies. However, certain challenges including technical limitations, ethical considerations, and data availability remain obstacles to utilizing the full potential of artificial intelligence in this field. Future research should focus on the development of unified species databases, identifying the most reliable models, Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI), and cost-effective solutions, while addressing ethical issues. This thesis concludes that artificial intelligence offers valuable opportunities for mitigating the impacts of climate change on wildlife with careful consideration of its limitations and ethical implications.

Zenodo
discussion

Sea turtle Bioacoustics Project

Sam Jamil

17 February 2025 8:16pm

Hi everyone, I have an opportunity to work with Green sea turtles and Olive ridleys off the coast of Sri Lanka, this will be my first bioacoustics conservation project. I would...

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Claudia Lacroix

7 March 2025 12:47pm

Hi Sam, I  did my master's on hatchling turtle vocalisations and their role in nest emergence behaviours (currently under review for publication). I recorded nest emergence behaviour in-situ using microphones and camera traps. I worked with snapping turtles, but the methods could be quite useful. I would be happy to share my thesis if that would be helpful.

there are a few sea turtle papers that describe hatchling vocalisations but not many experiments testing hypotheses for these vocalisations. 

here are some papers that could help you get you started:

Shoot me a message if interested in chatting more :)

 

M Zahirul Islam

7 March 2025 1:32pm

Hello Sam ...great work, would like to see the paper when it comes online. I would like to know about the device....Bests Zahir

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